Category: Stu’s Reviews

Genre: Book     

Grade: A-

Notable People: Martin Walker

Title: A Chateau Under Siege

Review: Walker, a former diplomat and international journalist, once again delivers a brilliant combination of mystery, political intrigue, current world events and French culture. This latest (2023) Bruno, Chief of Police adventure surrounds the Russian invasion of Ukraine and related terrorist activities in France; seemingly astoundingly in the lovely and picturesque Vezere Valley. I love every part of these books- but the narrative in which Bruno instructs us on how he cooks classic French fare and the discovery of the remote wine caves, country markets, chateaus and a place that modern stresses have mostly left behind- are priceless. Walker is a really god writer, an apparently great cook, and a master storyteller…and Bruno, a character for the ages.

Genre: Book                 

Grade: A-

Notable People: Walter Mosley

Title: Blood Grove

Review: this 2021 take on Mosley’s fabulous and long running Easy Rawlins series brings us to Watts- torn LA of 1969. If you started early in this series, you know that Easy came to LA in the late 40s as a war struck GI, as the town was in its relative infancy and the boys were coming home to find a better life westward. Easy is in his late 40s now, and has his own private dick agency. The story is, as always, a complicated and convoluted whopper of tale, with endless red herrings. Mosley sis one of those writers whose chosen genre is mostly irrelevant; he is one of America’s best regardless of subject. As the Easy series has developed it had focused more and more on the American Black experience, and this one holds nothing back in describing the degree of racism, even at the time of the flowering of our country. At times, the book seems more about race than a mystery novel or character study, but it is hard not to see that as still relevant. Mosley has had the same adjunct characters for years and they are magnificent…study up on Mouse Alexander, possibly the most loyal sociopath in history. Mosley’s colors are a treat to behold.  

Genre: Book           

Grade: A-/ B+

Notable People: James Lee Burke

Title: Every Cloak Rolled in Blood

Review: this may be the most challenging book to review (as in grade) yet for me. I believe that Burke may be one of the 2-3 greatest living American authors-and that is an opinion shard by quite few. By his own forward to this book, this is his most personal work of his 60 plus books, and in his opinion, his best. It is clearly his most autobiographical and emotional; in many ways the story of his extraordinary grief after the passing of his daughter, Pamela, which coincided with the inherent losses of the pandemic. The book is gut wrenching and extremely powerful. I like a lot of that, but it is also pretty out there in terms of mysticism/ephemerality……and sometimes hard to tell between the two. This was a quite hard read for me at times; both painful and consuming, but then there is his legendary prose to consider. How do you ignore  a sentence (run on as it may be like this: “And the most poignant image of all, the one that defined the existential and ephemeral and heartbreaking imprint on our souls, one we could neither quarrel with nor of our own volition, choose to reject; an orange moon in late autumn above an ocean of sugarcane swirling in the wind, the stalks hammered with streaks of purple and gold, clacking like broomsticks, the smoke from the sugar refineries electrified with floodlights, all of it as transient as an ancient fish working its way out of the sea and onto the sand.” .

Burke is an American giant of letters and this book basks in many of the themes and characters of his legacy. If you like Burke, worth a try…he is a great, great writer.